Patriots head into draft with 11 picks at their disposal

Friday

Apr 24, 2009 at 12:01 AMApr 24, 2009 at 12:44 AM

Bill Belichick is done cramming. “It’s kind of like studying for a final exam,” the New England Patriots head coach said earlier this week as the NFL Draft approached. “You’ve got a whole semester’s worth of information and material.

Glen Farley

Bill Belichick is done cramming.

“It’s kind of like studying for a final exam,” the New England Patriots head coach said earlier this week as the NFL Draft approached. “You’ve got a whole semester’s worth of information and material.

"What questions is the professor going to ask on the final exam? Which five questions are they going to be? I don’t know. You’ve got to study all the material. You hope that you’re on the target (with) the ones he’s asked. When it’s over, you probably wish you would have studied a little more on something else and maybe spent a little less time on another area.

“That’s kind of the way it is on the draft every year. You have to be prepared for everything. In the end, you never know what it’s going to be.”

Exam day is here, and while there really is no telling how the weekend-long draft will unfold this much is known:

- The Patriots hold four picks – one in the first round, three more in the second – on the opening day of the draft, which kicks off at 4 o’clock this afternoon (NFL Network; ESPN from 4-9, then ESPN2).

- They hold seven more picks – two each in the third and sixth rounds; one apiece in the fourth, fifth and seventh rounds – on the second day of the draft, which begins at 10 a.m. Sunday (NFL Network; ESPN).

- Specifically, the breakdown finds the Patriots drafting at Nos. 23, 34, 47, 58, 89, 97, 124, 170, 199, 207 and 234. Of those 11 picks, eight can be traded. The three compensatory picks (97th, 170th and 207th ) the team was awarded by the league for free agent losses cannot be moved.

- Yes, the Patriots have been talking trades of late, but that’s standard operating procedure for teams around the NFL at this time of year.

“At this point in time, there’s a lot of preliminary conversation,” Belichick said during a predraft press conference at Gillette Stadium Tuesday. “You talk to a team or they talk to you, whichever way it goes. Are they interested in moving a certain pick? Are you interested in moving a certain pick? And you just kind of get some parameters.

“Some teams are at a certain point in the draft where they kind of say, ‘No, I don’t think we’re going to want to move.’ OK. Great. Well, you know on draft day, if you were interested in moving to that spot, that’s probably not a real good option. There’s other teams that will tell you, ‘We’d absolutely love to consider something if maybe one or two guys that we’re looking for aren’t there.’ OK. Great. Come to that point and (if) you’re interested in movin g to that position, that’ll be the team you contact. (It’s) more along those lines.”

With an abundance of picks at their disposal, there is no question that there could be movement over the course of this weekend in Foxboro. This, after all, is a franchise that has made 28 draft weekend deals during the Belichick era.

It all began with a trade on April 16, 2000, that saw the Patriots acquire San Francisco’s sixth-round pick in 2001 for a seventh-round choice in 2000 they’d previously acquired from Philadelphia. The draft weekend deals have led to the departure of quarterback Drew Bledsoe to Buffalo in 2002 and the arrival of wide receiver Randy Moss from Oakland in 2007.

“It’s always an exciting time when you build your team,” said Belichick, “and this weekend will be an important team-building time for all of us in the National Football League.”

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